Peter Jackson Races to Complete The Hobbit in Time for Premiere

Peter Jackson makes epic films, and epic films take an extraordinary amount of time to produce. In the case of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the trek to completion is coming down to the wire.

Jackson has been working on The Hobbit, which opens next month, at the Park Road Post Production facility in Wellington, New Zealand, for weeks to complete every last VFX trick, CGI shot and sound effect in time for the film’s opening.

“It’s due to be completed literally two days before the premiere. Hopefully,” Jackson says in the film’s latest production video (above). “You’re going to see a lot of sleep-deprived people in this blog — everybody’s working around the clock to get the film finished.”

The clip, which is as funny and fascinating as the eight other production diaries Jackson has released online, shows every last detail going into the film’s final push: Jabez Olssen and Jackson editing the film together, final construction of hundreds of CGI shots, and final sound effects for the movie.

There’s also a wonderful look into the “Department of Internal Beard-Hairs” — the motion-capture wing dedicated to the facial hair worn by the movie’s fantastic characters. “We’ve advanced the art of motion caption quite substantially on The Hobbit, including the detail of motion-capturing the individual hairs of dwarves’ beards,” Jackson says. Judging by the work displayed by his crew in this short clip, digital beards may never be the same.

Finally, there is the music soundtrack, which has been (is being?) recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London. It’s being played, on the day of the video diary at least, by a 93-person orchestra and it sounds, well, amazing. But even once it’s done and laid down in the final film, it’s just the beginning, notes re-recording mixer Michael Semanick.

“We’ve got another three weeks … and then another couple films,” he says. “The journey’s long from over, it’s just really starting.”